Protests so far in Saudi Arabia have been limited to the Eastern province of the country. |
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At the same time, Crocker sees the Saudi Arabian regime — unlike those in Egypt and potentially Libya — surviving any unrest.

“I’ve spoke to some senior Saudis; they know they’re coming,” Crocker said of the planned protests. “They don’t sound at all concerned. They think they’ve got an understanding that people are going to, you know, call for this, call for that. But that there’s nothing pushing this toward deliberate confrontation with the government on the physical side or toward major demand up to and including a regime change.”

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He added: “We’re sitting here Wednesday. and I hate predictions 48 hours away. But I don’t think it’s going to be dramatic.” For one, the Saudis “have been very successful against extremist elements,” including Al Qaeda, he said.

“But those guys would like nothing better than to see a violent clash between protesters and security authorities, and the Saudis know it,” Crocker said.

If Saudi Arabia “were to become unhinged, the consequences are almost impossible to imagine,” Crocker told reporters. “But again, I just don’t see it happening. … Their downfall has been predicted in the '50s, in the '60s, in the '70s, in the '80s, in the '90s.”

While people also said the same of Egypt before popular uprising overturned that regime there, Youcef Yousfi, Algeria’s minister of energy and mines, echoed Wednesday that the Saudi unrest should not affect oil supply or leadership there.

“I am confident about the stability of Saudi Arabia,” Yousfi said in a speech at the CERAWeek conference. “I don’t think there will be [a] disturbance in production or exports.”

Gala Riani, a Middle East expert at IHS CERA, said while more protests in Saudi Arabia will certainly occur, “they’re not going to significantly damage or threaten general stability in the country.”

At the same time, he added, “anything that happens in Saudi Arabia is going to worry the market greatly.”

If Friday’s protests are not as dramatic as some fear, Crocker suggested that the Obama administration could issue a statement “that everybody take a deep breath, calm down, do not succumb to hysteria, and let’s see how things develop.”

Doing so, Crocker said, “would be hugely reassuring to the markets, hugely reassuring to our friends in the region. And then you can have a quiet dialogue about the need for reforms and so forth.”

Gosh, of course we should expect Obama to be totally consistent and publically warn the Saudi King about firing upon his own people as he did with Mubarak, and follow that up with statements that it's time for the King to leave...with "now" meaning "yesterday".

So ironic that though the leader of the 9/11 crew (Atta) was an Egyptian, the rest of the boys were Saudi's, and it's no secret that the biggest source of funding for bin Laden has always been, and still is the Saudis.

But as we shall soon see, oil is thicker than blood and/or foreign policy consistency.